PSX Mode Unofficial Compatibility List

[pandubz]

The Situation
For anyone unaware, PSX (aka PS1) games are bootable as of the 1.5.0 development series and into newer PCSX2 versions. You can now use your PSX games in PCSX2 and expect some kind of response.

However, there are still some components that are incomplete, or not working fully. Issues include but are not limited to boot failures, graphics corruption, FMV corruption, missing or corrupted audio, inability to read memory cards, or unresponsive controls. So, we have an unofficial list here of what games work and what doesn't.

The PCSX2 community does not yet officially support PSX games. Any issues you encounter may be discussed freely, however no official support channels will help you with PSX problems. ALL bug reports for PSX games will be immediately closed as invalid.

Known Issues

• Only PS2 BIOSes from original fat PS2's will be able to run PSX games. Due to the IOP changes Sony made on the slims, they simply won't run PSX games in PCSX2 right now.
  
• Audio will always be pitch-shifted a half step up, due to a rather complicated problem with sample rates. Resolved as of 1.7.0-dev-324!
  
• Just about every game will have some sort of distortion and/or corruption during FMVs, due to multiple DMA and PS1 GPU problems.
  
• PSX memory cards will appear in the PS2 BIOS as Pocketstation devices. This is due to a hack that was required for some Pocketstation compatible games to detect memory cards, and is strictly a visual side-effect with no performance or compatibility issues.
  

Possible DIY Fixes
If you have a PSX game that seems to have problems, here's some quick things to try before declaring it broken:

• IOP Interpreter often fixes boot failures among other problems. Don't worry about speed, the IOP Interpreter is surprisingly quick for an interpreter and as long as your CPU is at or above PCSX2's recommended CPU rating, you should be able to run this.
  
• Use a Software renderer, instead of a Hardware renderer. If this doesn't immediately solve the issue, reboot the game with the Software renderer already selected. Again, don't worry about speed here, the amount of GPU work is minimal and should be a non-issue for PCs that meet PCSX2's CPU requirements.
  
• Sometimes a game may not format a PSX memory card correctly. Try booting to the PS2 BIOS to format memory cards instead.
  
• Eject any PS2 memory cards.
  
• Lower the EE cyclerate. Doesn't seem to have any negative consequences, this tends to just speed games up.
  

How You Can Help
Leave a reply! I'm making a list here of games both successful and failures. The end goal here is that if we can catalog which games have problems, we know which games to test with and can pinpoint what exactly is wrong and how to go about fixing it. For a reply, please include anything relevant to your game. Check out some existing replies for some examples.

Compatibility Levels:

• Playable: You can get from 'new game' to 'end credits' (regardless of speed).
  
• Ingame: You can get through menus, intro cutscenes / videos, and see ingame graphics, but either due to graphical bugs, crashes, un-resolved errors, you can't play through the entire game.
  
• Menus: You can get into the menus, be it past 3D / video intro, memcard checks etc, but when starting a new game, it will lock up, crash, enter a loop etc.
  
• Intro: The game will show 2D logos, or video, but will not get into menus. This could be one screen, or 20, but won't show much.
  
• Nothing: Exactly what it says, this game crashes before showing any graphics, making any sound etc
  

Blyss and Nobbs' Google Doc: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1...sp=sharing

#

• 007: The World Is Not Enough [Ingame] [Gamefixes Required]
  

A

• Ace Combat 2 [US][Ingame]
  
• Ace Combat 3 [US] [Ingame] - Needs IOP Interpreter
  
• Alien Resurrection [US] [Playable]
  
• Alien Trilogy [US] [Playable]
  

C

• C12: Final Resistance [US] [Playable] - missing music
  
• Castlevania Symphony of the Night [Broken]
  
• Crash Bandicoot [Ingame] - Audio problems
  
• Crash Bandicoot 2 [US] [Playable]
  
• Crash Bandicoot 3 [Playable]
  

D

• Digimon World 2 [US] [Ingame]
  
• Digimon World 3 [US] [Playable]
  

F

• Final Fantasy VII [US] [Ingame]
  
• Final Fantasy VIII [US] [Ingame]
  
• Final Fantasy IX [US] [Broken]
  
• Frogger [US] Playable
  

G

• Gran Turismo [Playable]
  

H

• Hot Wheels Turbo Racing [US] [Intro]
  

K

• Klonoa - Door to Phantomile [US] [Playable]
  
• Knockout Kings [US] - Playable
  

L

• Legend of Dragoon [US] [Ingame]
  
• Lunar Star Silver Story [US] [Playable]
  

M

• Medal of Honor [US] [Intro]
  
• Medievil [US] [Ingame]
  
• Metal Gear Solid [US] [Playable] - Needs IOP Interpreter
  
• Mortal Kombat 4 [Intro]
  
• Mortal Kombat: Sub-Zero [US] [Ingame]
  

N

• Namco Museum 3 [US] [Playable] - Needs IOP Interpreter
  

P

• Pink Panther Pinkadelic Pursuit [Nothing]
  

R

• Rascal [US] [Ingame] Hangs when loading level, in-game music out of sync
  
• Rayman 1 [US] [Broken]
  
• Rayman 2 [Playable]
  
• RC Helicopter [Playable]
  
• Resident Evil: Director's Cut [Ingame] - Needs IOP Interpreter
  

S

• Shockwave Assault [Ingame] - Needs IOP Interpreter
  
• Silent Hill [Intro]
  
• Sledstorm [US] [Playable]
  
• Small Soldiers [Playable]
  
• Soul Blade [US] [Menus]
  
• Spiderman [Playable]
  
• Spyro The Dragon [US] [Playable] - Needs IOP Interpreter
  
• Spyro 2: Ripto's Rage! [US] [Playable]
  
• Spyro 2: Ripto's Rage! [JP] [Intro]
  
• Spyro 3: Year of the Dragon [US] [Ingame] - Needs IOP Interpreter
  
• Star Wars Rebel Assault 2 [US] [Menus]
  
• Suikoden [Playable]
  
• Syphon Filter [US] [Broken]
  

T

• Tekken 2 [Broken]
  
• Titan War [Intro]
  
• Tomb Raider [US] [Ingame]
  
• Tomb Raider 4 [Playable]
  
• Tomb Raider 5 [Playable]
  
• Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 [Ingame]
  
• Toy Story 2 [Ingame] - Needs IOP Interpreter
  
• Twisted Metal 2 [Playable]
  

W

• Wipeout [US] [Ingame]
  
• Wipeout XL [US] [Ingame]
  

X

• Xenogears [Nothing]
  

Y

• Yu-Gi-Oh! Forbidden Memories [Ingame] - Needs IOP Interpreter
  

[pandubz]

Digimon World 2 (US/NTSC)
Playability: Game runs, but have not played long enough to check completion ability.
Memcards: Loads, formats and saves without issue.
Other Issues: Many battle sounds do not work. Setting the minimap to full screen is volatile and can cause complete emulator crashes at unknown times, even after restoring the minimap to the smaller size.

Digimon World 3 (US/NTSC)
Playability: Playable to completion. Semi frequent save state use recommended, game infrequently hangs without warning.
Memcards: Loads, formats and saves without issue.
Other Issues: Savestate stability degrades over time if used continuously without a memcard save and loading a fresh game instance.

Final Fantasy VIII (US/NTSC)
Playability: Game runs, but have not played long enough to check completion ability. FMV corruption (an issue for all PSX games) makes this one pretty much pointless to play, considering their importance in the game.
Memcards: Loads, formats and saves on 1.5.0-2236 and later, broken on older builds.

Hot Wheels Turbo Racing (US/NTSC)
Playability: Unplayable. Hangs on loading screen on IOP recompiler and interpreters. EE interpreter makes no difference.

[weirdbeardgame]

Title: Lunar Star Silver Story [ingame]
Region: USA
If the game is capable of formatting a PSX memory card: Yes
If the game is capable of loading from a PSX memory card: Yes
If the game is capable of saving to a PSX memory card: Yes

Title: Spyro The Dragon: [ingame] - needs iop interpeter
The game if set to re compiler will play the first cutscene then crashes pcsx2
If the game is capable of formatting a PSX memory card: Yes
If the game is capable of loading from a PSX memory card: Yes
If the game is capable of saving to a PSX memory card: Yes

Title: Spyro 2 [JP]: [Intro]
This game will boot but no title screen access means no in game at this time.

Title Spyro 3 Year of the dragon [US] : [Intro]
Same as above

[CK1]

After consulting with pandubz, we've decided to expanded the thread into an unofficial compatibility list. Post any results here!

[Atomic83]

Rayman 3 is not on ps1 . I think you mean Rayman 2

Anyway here is my games tested with MTVU disabled and OpenGL software. I have not reported any Sound issue due to the fact that every games have the same issue (missing voices/music or broken sounds) :

-----------------------------------------------------------------
-Resident evil directors cut: ingame

Only work with IOP to interpreter, menus and fmv are fine but suffer for flickering, the graphics are broken once ingame.

-Tomb Raider 5: playable

Work realy nice no graphics issue at all with software mode but suffer for a major speed issue (the game speed is 200% faster than the normal speed).

-Tomb Raider 4: playable

Nearly the same as Tomb Raider 5 but unfortunatly the character color turns blue when encountering a light source and the speed issue is still here.

-Alien Trilogy: ingame

Only work with IOP to interpreter, menus and fmv suffer for flickering but once ingame, the game looks realy fine.

-Alien Resurection: playable

Works great in menus and ingame, the fmv suffer for the same flickering as Alien Trilogy.

-Titan war: intro

Display a warning error after the intro: "a system error has occurred please reboot your system".

-Crash bandicoot 3: playable

Graphics issue along with SPS.

-Shockwave assault: ingame

Only go ingame with IOP to interpreter but crash when going on the battlefield

-Yu-Gi-Oh! FORBIDDEN MEMORIES: ingame

Only go ingame with IOP to interpreter but the disc seems to stop reading when entering in scenario scene

-Toy Story 2: ingame

Only boot with IOP set to interpreter, major graphics issue when ingame.

-007 the world is not enough: menu

Won't load a game level.

-Spiderman: playable

Work great but once ingame, the graphics become corrupt
-----------------------------------------------------------------

I also have an issue with NTSC games, they wont load on a PAL bios (stuck at a black screen), and this seems to also be the case for NTSC bios with PAL games (and the Skip bios patch AKA fast boot don't work with PS1 games).

[rama]

FF8 now saves and loads fine with the PocketStation hack
It has too many DMA related graphical glitches to be playable though.

[Nobbs66]

What's wrong with DMAs that's causing issues?

[pandubz]

What's wrong with DMAs that's causing issues?

It's the DMA 3 not ready that affects just about every PSX title right now. Seems like it's being accessed too quickly, causing both broken visuals and audio. In FF 8's case, FMVs are a huge part of the game so without them it's essentially pointless to try and complete.

[CK1]

If that message comes from the IOP, I'm assuming it's a CD timing issue

Code:

// Dma0/1   in Mdec.c
// Dma3     in CdRom.c
// Dma8     in PsxSpd.c
// Dma11/12 in PsxSio2.c

[rama]

The problem in FF8 appears to be with the GPU DMA, same as with most other titles. The emulation itself there is buggy, leading to broken packets.
I'm hoping user wisi returns one day and updates it. He has a good chance of being able to fix it.